a deeper look at innovation through the lenses of media, technology, venture investment and hyperculture

Gunther Sonnenfeld

From a recent talk I gave in Boulder, Colorado on data, storytelling and the future of advertising...

Welcome!

Take a look around the site and explore. You'll see that I'm big on new forms of creativity, storytelling, social change, emerging technology, making brands more relevant and giving the status quo a swift kick in the arse. Beyond that, I'm very much invested in what people (like you) are doing to shift paradigms and create a better world.

* Advisor & former acting CIO (Chief Information Officer) of Faveeo, a unique discovery engine and publishing platform based in Lausanne, Switzerland used by Cisco, SAP, Bombardier, The World Health Organization, The International Red Cross and other reputable orgs;

* Advisor to The Cure Group, a leading collective & holding company focused on cannabis therapeutics and other holistic extraction solutions;

* Advisor to Village Lab, a sustainability outfit dedicated to whole systems design of intentional communities;

* Advisor & co-developer of Paperlet, an online writing/editing tool and publishing platform for undiscovered writers and students at the elementary through collegiate levels;

* Advisor and strategist for SAGA, a Montreal-based transmedia company focusing on unique, immersive platform experiences; we are working on IoTheatre, a leading edge Internet of Things + interactive storytelling platform;

* Active advisor to Coin of Sale, a unique Bitcoin and cryptocurrency platform based in Singapore that provides a POS solution for merchants and a means to measure value within a network exchange.

* Producer on Algren, a feature documentary about the life and times of Nelson Algren, a Chicago beat writer who influenced many artists including Lou Reed, John Sayles, Billy Corgan, Wayne Kramer, William Friedkin and Michael Mann. This is my second documentary.

I am a former partner at K5 Ventures, and have been actively involved in 50+ ventures overthe course of my career. Innovation and development projects over the last few years have included work for P&G, YouTube, Philips, Noble House, Hulu, Microsoft and Mercedes-Benz. Recent exits include Heardable, a brand intelligence platform that provides a FICO-like (or Klout-like) diagnosis of a company or industry's online performance, covering 15mm companies across 27 industries using over 827 variables. Before that, I served as the SVP of Cultural Innovation & Applied Technology at RAPP/DDB (Omnicom Group).

Between the work I do for startups and large organizations, I am also hard at work on a highly relevant passion project, which endeavors to change the way we consume, disseminate and share information contextually. More clinically, it is a new form of graph and entity search, best described as a hybrid of Factual, Wolfram Alpha and Quora. Someone else described it as "what comes after Google". That's a very bold statement, so I'll simply say that we think it will make a huge difference in the everyday lives of companies and customers.

I've won some awards for my work, but more importantly, my provocations here detail some of the ways in which this paradigm shift is happening, and why it will persist.